GIAC Certified Enterprise Defender

GCED sits at an awkward intersection of offense and defense, and I was not sure how to study for it. I used NerdExam to focus on the incident response and malware analysis domains where I felt weakest. Two months later, I have the cert and a new senior role.

Coming from help desk, defensive network infrastructure was my biggest hurdle. The practice questions covered it well enough that I stopped second-guessing myself on exam day.

The questions felt harder than the actual exam, which is exactly what you want going in. Solid coverage of the vulnerability scanning and pen testing concepts GCED tests.